If you’re Sean O’Keefe, you lucked out with a hotel room (his secret: “being nice”).
If you were shut out of every hotel, hostel, rented attic, uncarpeted basement—or you’re simply a broke college student—the inauguration has become an urban adventure of finding space wherever you can.
Dupont Circle, a stone’s throw away from the downtown business district, is, at least during inauguration season, home to cops on bicycles, lost tourists with rolling suitcases, drivers screaming in what must be a combination of frustration and pure terror while attempting to navigate a crowded streetscape (these days, you’re taking your life into your own hands), and an enormous white tent that resembled an igloo and looked like it could house an entire Carman floor.
“I don’t really know how many it holds,” said Bob Ganoufh, who was keeping guard over their temporary home. A D.C. local, Bob was planning on participating in the group’s Arrest Bush ’09 protest, which was scheduled for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. “We’re going to march to the White House while carrying Bush dolls, and we’re going to throw shoes at them.”
Arrest Bush ’09, an event comprised of several groups nationwide, pulled in protesters from coast to coast. Ganoufh got in on the shoe-throwing when he received an e-mail about a guy who was constructing a huge tent for D.C. He said he wasn’t sure if he was going to stay for the inauguration or not.
If urban camping adventure isn’t your style, mooching off your better-housed friends might be more up your alley. Oberlin sophomore Alix Simonson, who lives in Northwest D.C., stood up at her college senate meeting and announced that anyone who wanted to stay at her house in Washington for the inauguration was welcome. Her fellow students didn’t hesitate to take her up on that offer. The floor of her house is now hidden under layers of mattresses and spare blankets. Between her and her older brother, the Simonsons are hosting nine guests, bringing the total resident count up to 13, plus an iguana.
“They’ve been really good about this,” Simonson said of her parents’ tolerating a dozen college students sleeping on every possible floor surface. “I think she [her mother] secretly enjoys having all these kids around.”
With her brother, a high school teacher in Durham, hosting several of his students, Simonson recounted having to separate the rooms by gender but allowing her coupled-up college friends to claim the basement. “They argue a lot,” she said.
The group had recently come back from the Lincoln Memorial concert, and she said they were planning to forgo the crammed metro and make the several-mile walk back home after the inauguration.
